Bowed Head and Lowered Eyes
by literaryradical
Summary: A dead baby and a man from Sara's past invade her dreams-- and then her life. G/S orientation. Chapter 4 is new!
1. Brief Flashes

Title: Bowed Head and Lowered Eyes

Disclaimer: I don't own them. I also don't own Edna Buchanan, The Stranger Beside Me, Memento, or the words of Maya Angelou. Oh, and I borrowed a term used first (I believe) by Ipstenu on the TWOP boards. (www.televisionwithoutpity.com) Consider it a shout-out. You could sue me, but I'm a struggling actress, so all I have is my health.

Random Stuff: Doc Robbins' first name is David, not Al, no matter how the CSI website says otherwise. In fact, disregard the website, as I have. I understand that Rohypnol and GHB were probably not around in the early nineties, but in my little universe, they were, just to make it work. I understand I've probably played fast and loose with the truth in several places for the sake of plotline and drama. Sue me. Or email me, and perhaps I'll continue changing it. This is what happens without a beta reader. If you'd like to volunteer, email me. FYI, I've never read "The Collector," so I make up a plot for it from what I vaguely know. Oh, and this story was begun in March of 2001, just after Too Tough to Die aired. 

Spoilers: None, at the moment. 

Summary: A dead baby and a man from Sara's past invade her dreams—and then her life. Note: It's a Sara-centric fic, so don't expect to see a lot of Nick, Warrick, or Catherine. Also, there are some not-so-vague references to what I will only refer to as bad stuff' in Sara's past, so if said bad stuff' will creep you out, don't read further. Also, there will probably be some implied UST between Grissom and Sara, so if you don't like it, don't read further.

*Brief flashes. She could only make sense of it in brief flashes, like the horror of it all was just too much to take in all at once. She would see the fluff of lint on the sheet and the metallic distortion of her own reflection on the table. This cold, hard version of her could look at the whole picture without blinking. She couldn't. So she would focus on things like the curl in Maggie Danver's hair, instead of on the woman's face, scrunched into a silent, anguished cry. She'd see the gloved hands of the coroner, instead of the small body under the sheet. That she had to see in pieces-a hand, a foot, a few strands of hair instead of a whole perfect baby. Perfect except for the purplish bloat around the child's mouth, perfect except for the lungs that did not breathe and the heart that did not beat. She would see that heart, so still, in the moments before she woke. As she stared at it, the heart would quiver. She'd blink, thinking the long shifts were playing tricks on her eyes. But then it would quiver again, and then contract, and then the tiny heart would start to beat. She'd scream for someone to help, hoping that perhaps that slight movement of the heart meant something could be done. But she'd scream and call until she was hoarse and still no one would come. So finally she'd force herself to move toward the table, to lift the tiny body in her arms, feeling the child convulse as she watched the heart shudder. Then the small girl-it was a girl, she knew-would cry out, a lonely, anguished cry, and die in her arms. *

Sara Sidle awoke in a cold sweat, tangled in her blankets. The dying baby's cry was actually the phone, calling from its place on the nightstand. She wiped the moisture from her brow, running her fingers through her hair as far as the matted curls would allow. The phone was on its sixth ring as she reached for it. "Gris, it's my day off. What do you want?"

-----

Coffee. Coffee was good. It was eleven a.m. She'd slept for two hours, maybe three. It was more than she usually got. She couldn't remember what time it was that she finally put the book down-"The Corpse Had a Familiar Face," -- pleasure reading, very little Latin. "Sexual Homicide: Patterns and Motives"-- that was serious reading, but even Sara couldn't handle that before bed.

She'd once confided to Catherine that she'd been having dreams. It was a casual conversation in the break room, over Heinekens and Nicorette after a shift. Sara didn't want to go home. Home was an apartment not far from the strip, a studio. It was more space than she needed.

"Do you ever dream?" She'd asked Catherine.

"Everybody dreams."

"About cases. About victims."

"You learn how not to take it to bed with you." Catherine popped another piece of gum. "Read a book before you go to sleep. That should help."

"Thanks," Sara answered, before adding, "Go home to your kid." Catherine did. Sara stopped at a bookstore on her way home. She bought a stack of books, blew most of a week's salary on titles with "Corpse," "Bones," or "Murder" in the title. It didn't matter much-it wasn't like she had anything else to spend her money on. As she settled down to read, it occurred to her that perhaps Catherine had meant a different type of book. Sara brushed the thought away. She wasn't interested in the type of books that had men with rippling muscles on the cover. Not her type in so many ways. She could sometimes enjoy a mystery or two, but after looking at real crime scenes all day, made up ones had ceased to thrill.

She liked "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face" because it was a look at crime from a different perspective, written by a reporter rather than a cop or ME. She'd read it many times before. A habit, re-reading her favorites until they fell apart. An old boyfriend named Marc had teased her about this habit as they lay in bed one night.

"How can you read that again, you've read it a thousand times."

"It's good."

"Isn't the point of reading a book wanting to know what happens next?"

"Don't be a prick. I'm not doing it to annoy you. I enjoy it."

She did enjoy it. There was something safe, something comforting about knowing what words would come next. Her job was unpredictable, her personal life was even worse, but she knew that the first line of "The Corpse Had a Familiar Face" would be the almost comical "My day off was history. So was Harvey St. Jean." 

At any rate, reading meant she didn't have to deal with Marc. The book was a wall between them that he wouldn't make the effort to cross. She read the same book-back then it was "The Stranger Beside Me"-night after night and hoped he'd get the hint. It took a while, but one night she came home after her shift to find everything gone-he'd even taken her clothes, leaving a note in the closet explaining "I paid for these." All that was left was the cat and her book, battered and dog-eared, lying on the hardwood floor of the living room. 

She bought new clothes and cat food the next day. Sara figured it was a good thing, really. Now she didn't have to throw out that pair of jeans from college that would never fit again. It made moving easier. She moved around a lot the next few years. Her apartment was as uncluttered as her life when rookie Criminalist Holly Gribbs was shot. A cat carrier, a suitcase, and a small carry-on was all she took with her when Grissom called her to Las Vegas later that year.

-----

The books weren't giving her nightmares and she didn't think it was her job. She'd always dealt well with crime scenes, even those involving children. She didn't feel a particular attachment to them; no maternal instinct in her, she guessed.

But recently there had been a new dream, one in which the baby was whole and alive.

*She'd cradled it to her chest, had felt the soft breaths dance across her collarbone. The infant wore only a soft cloth diaper and her shirt was unbuttoned. She could feel soft skin against her own. She'd cried in the dream, quiet tears, and the infant had laughed at her, flashing a gummy smile. She could smell talcum powder and that peculiar baby smell she had once likened to a 'new car' odor. Untainted, pure, clean. She drew the baby closer, holding the child close until it fell asleep.*

When she woke up, Sara didn't know whether to scream or laugh. She settled on laughing. "Well, Freud would have a field day with me," she spoke out loud, knowing that only the cat would hear her.

-----

Sara was on her second cup of coffee when Grissom arrived. He was late. That was a good or a bad sign, depending on your perspective. It was a good thing for Sara, on most days. It meant an interesting case, something that engaged Grissom's mind so thoroughly that he lost track of time. The last time it was an accidental death that looked very much like a homicide. She was grateful they had arrived before the bugs.

Today Gil Grissom's tardiness was an annoyance more than anything. Sara had been looking forward to a day off-some pleasant reading, the scanner emitting its familiar static and codes in the background, the cat at her side

"Deep in thought?" Grissom managed a half-smile as he entered the room.

"You could say that."

"You look troubled."

"I'm tired."

"I'm sorry I woke you. I thought you'd want to see this." He slid a file across the table to her. "Felicity Monroe. Age 24."

Sara flipped through the file. "Broken ribs, numerous facial fractures, several complaints filed against live-in boyfriend Joseph Grant for domestic violence." Her face hardened along with her resolve as she put down her cup of coffee. "Bastard killed her?"

"Not quite." Grissom shook his head. "In fact, not even close. She killed him."

"Score one for the good guys. He had it coming."

"Maybe not. It's your job to find out. Self-defense or homicide." He frowned. "Can you be objective?"

Sara was offended, but didn't show it. "Sure. Follow the evidence, right?"

"Right."

There was a silence that was neither awkward nor charged, despite Grissom's verbal mis-step. 

"Well, I should get going." Sara said, gathering her belongings, slipping the file into her bag. "Where are they holding her?"

"She's in the pen."

-----

"I'm sorry, really I am," she sobbed. Felicity Monroe was a slight woman, her dark hair falling in front of her tear-stained face as Sara interviewed her.

"For what?"

"For killing him." She raised her head to look at Sara and Sara was shocked at how pretty she could have been. Her eyes were large, though red-rimmed, and her bruised cheekbones were high. Her face was scarred with too many drunken arguments over late dinners. Sara could tell that Felicity Monroe had once had perfect teeth, before this man or perhaps the one before had knocked one of the lower ones out. Self- consciously, Sara thought of the gap between her own front teeth, another thing Marc had teased about. He'd offered to pay for her to get it fixed, but somehow she knew that-gap or no-she would never measure up to his standards. First the gap between her two front teeth, then he'd be paying for implants. He'd always complained about her slim, almost boyish figure.

The woman opposite her was anything but boyish. She moved with the ease and pseudo-grace of someone used to using her body as her weapon. She noticed Sara looking at her, appraising her, and leaned across the table.

"You like what you see?" She whispered, all thoughts of the man she'd so tearfully confessed to shooting gone from her mind. "You get me out of here, we'll go back to your place." Long eyelashes fluttered over blue eyes. Sara was startled, but hid it well. 

"Why not your place?" she asked in a flirtatious tone, batting her own eyelashes. "Because the body of the man you shot and killed is still there?"

Felicity leaned back in her chair. "I really am sorry," she said again, affecting the childlike voice she had used earlier in the conversation. "I didn't mean to."

"Look, lady, my boss sent me here to help you." Sara stood and moved to stand beside Felicity. "I can't do that if you keep trying to manipulate me. So, let's cut to the chase. I believe that Joey probably had it coming." She paused. "And what I believe has nothing to do with your little girl voice or whether or not I want to fuck you." The harsh language surprised Sara herself, but she stayed in character as she bent down, leaning close to the other woman's ear. "Are we clear?"

Felicity turned her head until her eyes were inches from Sara's. "Absolutely."

------

The dreams came again later that day, after her shift was over. The bed sheets wrapped themselves around her body, smothering her, as she fought blindly against their hold for air. In the dream, too, she couldn't breathe. 

*A man's hands were on her shoulders, pinning her to the ground. The concrete was cold and damp and she shuddered involuntarily. She could feel the hands on her body now, softly following the curve of her waist down her body, fumbling with a button or two along the way. She couldn't move, paralyzed by fear, she thought, or perhaps something he'd slipped into her drink. The chemical breakdowns for Rohypnol and GHB, the two most popular date rape drugs, appeared in her mind, the chemical symbols and numbers swimming around until they made no sense at all. She couldn't see either and realized she was probably injured. 911, she thought, before the numbers joined the symbols and the voices of everyone she'd ever trusted in a murky oblivion.

Strange, to be unconscious in a dream, sleep being a form of unconsciousness itself, she thought. Stranger still to recognize a dream as a dream. Perhaps that was why, by the time he'd managed to unbutton her jeans, she had relaxed. She knew what was coming next. 

'What the hell?' a voice cried and for a moment she thought it was her father, who had been dead for many years. The hands left her body abruptly to be replaced by a new set of hands, these ones smooth and small. A man's voice asking her name, asking if she was all right. She moved her mouth, the words stuck in her throat. She blinked a few more times, her vision returning, to see a man hovering over her, his hands under her shoulders, lifting her up. His hands were stronger than they looked, she thought with a clarity far beyond her current state. He gave her his coat, wrapping it around her shoulders, over the torn remnants of her shirt. Again she thought of her father and how he would comfort her when she was a child, wrapping strong arms around her, all the while speaking softly. There was a voice like that now, words bouncing through her ears. She strained to make sense of them. 

She wasn't aware of how long they sat there, him coatless in the cold evening air. She only felt as he lifted her first to her feet and then into his arms. She surrendered awareness reluctantly long before they arrived at his apartment. 

When she awoke, he was standing over her, a cloth in his hands. 'This will help,' he said, placing the soothing coolness across her forehead. 'I'm Marc Evans. What's your name?' he asked, softly. He had a soft voice that Sara liked and a gentle touch as he smoothed her hair against the pillow. 

'Sara.' It is at this point, both in the dream and in the memory, she realizes she is not in her own apartment or the bar she can last remember sitting in. 'Where are we?"

"I brought you back to my apartment." He smiled. "Don't worry, this is the extra room."

'Why?'

He frowned. 'I think someone hit you on the head,' he said finally, sparing her the details he assumed she could not recall. Although she remembered, this would be the last they would speak of it during the course of their two-year relationship. *

-----

Sara awoke, sweat pooling in the curve of her stomach. The hands were no longer hands, but the blanket, wrapped around her. She could move again. It was dark in her apartment, though a quick check of the clock assured her it was only 2 pm. She lay back, staring at the darkened ceiling, and thought, not for the first time, of Marc.

She'd moved in with him later that month. She felt safe with him. Perhaps this boring, boring man had been in the right place to save her for a reason. He was gentle with her, romantically. Not so gentle as to hint at what he saw in the alley that night, but gentle enough to set her at ease. It was one night about six months after they'd moved in together that it happened.

They were making love, a quiet affair, as usual. He enjoyed it and she didn't mind. But then, soon after they began, he put his hands on her shoulders, holding her down with more force that he could have intended.

'Marc,' she'd whispered. He ignored her, pushing harder on her shoulders. 'Stop it,' again, a soft cry, then louder. She began to struggle with him and he smiled at her.

'I knew,' he whispered into her ear, his breath hot against the coolness of the pillow. 'I knew,' he repeated, 'that this was the way you really liked it.'

She'd cried for a long time after that. In the shower, driving to work. She'd cried in the locker room and as she read her chemistry books and she'd cried as she drove home. All the while she smiled at people-the toll collector, the deli clerk she bought her lunch from, the other people in the gym. She smiled and laughed and cried on the inside.

That night he'd apologized, sincerely. He hadn't meant to hurt her. She'd been sending the wrong signals. She said she was sorry and next time she would be clearer. She knew it had nothing to do with signals.

She owed him more than she could stand. So the next time his hands found their way to her shoulders, she didn't resist. Then holding her down wasn't good enough any more and he started to hit her, bruise her where other people couldn't see. She was tough and didn't let herself cry out. He was turning into someone else and she was overwhelmed.

One night in particular she remembered. He had tied her hands above her head with a length of rope. She wasn't crying. She could remember that she was in control of herself and wasn't crying. That night he had threatened her with a knife-it was part of the game, he'd insisted. There was a moment right before the coolness of the blade touched her belly that she knew. In this moment of clarity, she could see where this was going and she realized that she was far from being in control--of herself or of anything else.

During the day, Marc attended to her every need, even doted on her. That daytime Marc wasn't the same man who seemed to only feel pleasure through her pain. She realized she needed to keep the daytime Marc around all the time.

She couldn't refuse sex outright. But she had the strength to fight in other ways.

The next day she bought the book, "The Stranger Beside Me." She decided she would read until Marc would fall asleep. Night after night they continued this way, until he tired of her, leaving her only the book and the cat.

In a way she was ashamed at the way she'd dealt with Marc. The feminist in her, long silent, was more angry than ashamed. That part chided that she should have kicked him out the first time it had happened.

But it was hard, feeling like you owed your life to someone. He'd come into her life at a moment when she was completely vulnerable and she knew that their relationship was built on that--her dependence on him. So when she'd started on her doctorate, started going to all those seminars and hanging out with her classmates afterwards, he was threatened. It got worse when she started spending long periods of time in the lab because she'd gotten an anthropology research position. The long shifts took her away from him and the little money she earned was her own. 

That night she'd been happy, thrilled, that she'd gotten published. Sure, there were several names ahead of hers on the thesis, but it was an accomplishment and she was proud. She finally felt like she could succeed on her own. Not that she would have told him that, but he had sensed the accomplishment and even pride in her voice. He knew she was no longer his possession.

The thing she was really ashamed of was that had he simply asked her to quit her job, she would have. She didn't know it then, but she knew now that her job had saved her life. 

There were times when she'd be processing a sample or looking over files and her mind would wander and she'd think about how work not only saved her life, but also had become her life.

----

"Sara?"

Sara blinked herself back to reality. Nick looked at her expectantly, but she couldn't remember the question. "I'm sorry, what?"

"I asked if you still had the Maggie Danvers case file."

"Oh. Yeah. Let me get it." It had been almost three weeks since Maggie Danvers's youngest daughter was brought to the morgue, her skin slowly fading into a cold blue shade from a cyanotic purple. The case had not progressed as Sara would have liked.

"Do you think she did it?" Nick asked. They were sharing a quiet moment in the break room before going on shift. There was another fifteen minutes until anyone else would report. Sara was always early; Nick rarely was.

"I'm not sure." Sara shrugged. "Maybe. There isn't the evidence yet to tell either way."

"I'm betting on poison of some sort. An injection."

"Maybe," she replied, her voice trailing off. "She was a nurse. She'd know what medications could be fatal yet leave no trace."

"You two still going over that case?" They turned to see Warrick standing in the doorway. "It's been weeks. We've all gone over it a hundred times. So," he said, sitting down and helping himself to the file, "what do you expect to find?"

Another shrug from Sara. "I don't know. It's not even about how or who anymore. I just want to know why."

"Whoa. You getting all maternal on us, Sidle?" Nick arched an eyebrow in her direction. "Women," he said to Warrick.

"Maybe," she murmured.

The two men regarded their fellow CSI for a moment, trying to decide if she was serious. She had been behaving strangely since the Maggie Danvers case began, Warrick thought. Freaking out over dead kids was normally Catherine's thing. Sara was more sensitive to cases of spousal abuse or rape. Warrick had a theory about that, but he knew it was none of his business.

Right or wrong, his theory didn't explain why she was so interested in the Maggie Danvers case. Warrick could usually read people pretty well, but he wouldn't have made a bet in a million years that he knew what was going through Sara Sidle's mind as she retrieved the file from him, leafing through it for a moment before stopping on a particularly disturbing autopsy photo.

"Did we rule out smothering?" she asked.

"I'd have to check with Doc Robbins on that one."

"You see this discoloration around her mouth? Fingers, maybe?" Sara rotated the 1:1 photo and tried to place her fingers over the purple markings.

"Maybe." Nick massaged the creases in his forehead. "Christ, Sara, I don't know. You stare at a spot on the wall long enough, it starts to jump around."

"Yeah. You're right." Sara put the contents of the file back into her bag just as Grissom entered the break room. 

"Slow day, my young Turks?"

"What?" Nick looked particularly confused.

"Shakespeare, probably," Warrick offered.

"So, Gruesome," Sara began, thinking that this was a game for two. "What have you got for us?"

"Patience, grasshopper." He poured himself a cup of coffee and poked at the remains of the previous shift's donuts with his pen. It had a rubber fly glued to the end of it. A Grissom touch. "It's a slow day," he said, after settling into a chair near the fridge. "Time to catch up on paperwork." He paused and looked at Sara. "Or the ones that got way."

"Don't you miss anything?"

"All the time. But I know you."

Sara marveled at how much intimacy could be expressed in so few words. She struggled to find an appropriate response, settling for, "Want to come to the morgue with me?"

----


	2. S.I.D.S. versus S.I.M.S.

"Coffee?" Chief Medical Examiner David Robbins offered as Sara and Grissom entered the morgue.

"Real coffee?" Sara asked. "Not that premium, grown in the mountains, yuppie $80 a pound stuff?"

"Guilty," replied Robbins, handing Grissom a cup.

"No thanks then."

"Your choice," Robbins shrugged. 

"Doc, could you tell us a little about the Anna Dole case?" Grissom asked, taking the lead. 

"I thought that was Eckley's? I gave him the findings weeks ago."

"He handed it off to us after he got called to testify on a federal case. I assume you have copies?"

Robbins rolled his eyes before moving toward his filing cabinet. "You think I'd give Eckley my notes?" He rummaged around in the cabinet for several minutes, as Grissom sipped his coffee and Sara grew increasingly uncomfortable. Handing Grissom a folder, he asked, "You want to see the body?"

"You haven't released the body?" Sara asked.

"The case is still open. Anyway, the parents haven't requested it at either."

Grissom looked up from the file, his reading glasses perched precariously on the tip of his nose. "Isn't that odd?" he mused, turning to Sara. "Hypothetically, if you were a mother, wouldn't you want to bury your child?"

"Hypothetically, you should be asking Catherine."

"Good point. Okay, David, let's see the body."

Sara's breath caught in her throat as Robbins pulled the slab from the drawer. The full-sized sheet covered a small bundle, centered neatly. She had forgotten exactly how small a six-week-old baby was. 

"You have a cause of death?" Grissom asked.

"It's difficult with a baby this young," Robbins began. "You start by ruling things out. No fractures, no internal bleeding, no bacterial infections, no viral invasions." He checked his clipboard. "Toxicology results back—no detectible toxins, no poisons, no pharmaceuticals, legal or otherwise. No evidence of lead poisoning."

"That leaves what, then?" Sara asked, hoping Robbins wouldn't decide to uncover the body. Unfortunately, he did just that in response to her question.

"Smothering, drowning, and S.I.D.S."

"Water in the lungs?"

"No. The lungs were a little underdeveloped for a child of this age, but not seriously. Probably due to a slight prematurity."

"Check for petichial hemorrhaging?"

"Of course," Hall replied, opening one of the child's eyes. Sara looked away as Grissom leaned in for a closer view. "No hemorrhaging."

"So that rules out smothering?" Sara asked.

"Not exactly. You see, telling the difference between S.I.D.S. and its cousin S.I.M.S.—"

"S.I.M.S.?"   
"Oh. Sudden Infant Murder Syndrome. Sorry, just a little coroner humor," he explained. "S.I.D.S. babies don't have petichial hemorrhaging. They stop breathing at the end of a breath cycle. Basically, the mechanism that tells them to breathe stops function, so when they exhale, they just don't inhale again. We don't know why. On the other hand, the breathing of a child who's been smothered has probably been interrupted mid-cycle. Hence the hemorrhaging."

"Then why is it hard to tell the difference? Either hemorrhaging or no, right?"

"Not necessarily, Sara. You see, in a smothering case, it is possible that the killer interrupted the child's breathing cycle after an exhalation. It could look like a S.I.D.S. case." He rubbed his bearded chin for a moment before adding, "I have a colleague in Germany who is doing a study on how many cases of S.I.D.S. are actually smothering. She estimates the figure to be as high as 10%."

"What would make someone do that?" Sara asked, barely realizing she had voiced her thoughts aloud.

"There's a theory," Grissom replied. "That some women, especially women who have difficult deliveries, don't bond properly with their babies. They see them as foreign bodies, even parasites."

"Or they have a hard time differentiating the baby as a separate person, no longer part of themselves." Robbins added. "In England, a woman who kills her baby within a year and a day of the birth cannot be charged with anything more than manslaughter. Some psychiatric circles believe that women who kill their infants are actually committing a form of suicide."

"Thanks David."

"Sure. The coffee's that good, right?"

"For the information." 

They left the morgue and Sara was glad to escape the smell of death and mocha chino. 

"So what now?" Grissom asked.

"You're asking me."

"It's your case."

"In that case, patience grasshopper." Sara smiled at him before focusing her gaze on the clock on the wall behind him. "Can we get Maggie Danver in a room?"

"I'll call Brass."


	3. Never eat at a place called Mom's.

Maggie Danver agreed to meet with them, so Grissom and Sara headed for the interrogation room. 

Two flights of stairs and four turns through the hallways. Grissom didn't know how many times he'd traversed that route, from the morgue to the interrogation room. His stomping ground, so to speak. He was comfortable here.

Inside the interrogation room was another story. He wasn't sure what Sara intended to say to Maggie Danver and it worried him. It wasn't that he didn't trust Sara. He trusted her more than most. Usually they were on the same wavelength and she instinctively followed a course of action he was drawn to himself. But he didn't like flying blind.

"You know what you're doing."

She stopped and considered this, her eyes sweeping over the hallway, alighting briefly on a water fountain, a clock, the door of the interrogation room. Grissom realized she wasn't seeing any of these things. Sara was looking inward, thinking, figuring things out. He wished he could see what she did.

"No. Not anymore," she said after a long silence, finally returning her gaze to him.

"Well, that's the first step."

"What is?"

"Admitting that we don't know what we're doing."

"I thought the first step was admitting that we are powerless over our addictions?" She raised a cool eyebrow at Grissom, who responded with an arch in kind. "Sometimes I tag along with Warrick to his meetings."

"Might not Workaholics Anonymous be more appropriate?"

"Nah. Warrick's a gambler, remember?" She flashed a smile to light up a room. "Shall we?"

"Lead the way."

"Glad you finally decided to join us," Brass groused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his wrinkled trousers before gravitating toward one corner of the interrogation room. 

"Sorry, Brass. We just stopped into see Doctor Robbins and he gave us some very inter—" Sara stopped abruptly, the words losing momentum and dying in her throat. 

Grissom followed her line of sight and found himself looking at a man whom he assumed was Maggie Danver's husband. He was unremarkable, with brown hair and a slightly larger than average build. Grissom guessed by the way he moved that he used to be a really skinny guy who had bulked up at the gym. The gym would be important to him, as would his appearance. His suit was expensive—tailored—but his shoes were scuffed. 

*Gotcha,* Grissom thought. A man trying to change his image, from weakling to tough guy, from working class to ruling class undone by his shoes.

This profile completed in seconds, Grissom turned back to Sara, who stood frozen near the door.

*Like a deer in the headlights. *

"Sara." Danver's voice was calm, quiet. He almost seemed amused.

"Marc." Sara looked from Marc Danver to Grissom then back again, and Grissom was struck by the look of desperation on her face and the tension in her body. "I'm sorry, I have to go," she said, bolting for the door. It happened fast, before Grissom could protest, before Brass even noticed the tension in the room.

"We knew each other, a long time ago," Marc said, the cocky smile returning. "She's gained weight. Probably because she doesn't have anyone at home to watch it for her." 

Grissom puzzled over this remark, studying first Marc, then Maggie. Maggie had folded herself into her chair and beside this larger than average man she looked very small. Vulnerable and almost scared. Grissom wondered again if she could have done what the evidence was saying she did. He made a mental note to check farther into Marc Danver before leaving the interrogation room in search of Sara.

-----

"Boss, she's in there." Nick gestured to the co-ed locker room. "But there's definitely something wrong. She damn near put me through the wall because I didn't get out of her way fast enough."

"I'll take care of it."

"Hey, Gris, don't you think I should get Catherine? I mean she's better at people. Living ones, at least."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Nicky." Grissom shook his head and opened the door to the locker room. He poked his head inside, ducked as an unidentifiable object came flying at his head, withdrew, and closed the locker room door. "Maybe getting Catherine's not such a bad idea," he said, dialing his cellphone as Sara continued to take out her frustrations on the unsuspecting items inhabiting the locker room.

"No dice, Grissom. No way are you getting me back to the lab right now to deal with a personal problem. No way."

"Catherine. I need you."

Catherine sat up in bed, amid protests from her muscles and her bed partner. "Grissom" She sighed. "It would be better if you handled this on your own. I'll get out of bed for you, I'll come down there in my pajamas if you need me to, but Sara doesn't need me."

"You're not wearing any pajamas."

Catherine laughed, eliciting a grunt from the sleeping form beside her. "And that's why you make the big bucks."

"I'm not sure what to say to her, Catherine. I don't even know what's wrong."

"Then that's your first question."

The locker room was quiet, but Grissom would have felt better had he been wearing protective gear. A facemask, elbow pads, maybe a cup. He glanced around the room, ever conscious of the risk of randomly flung objects hurting him.

He found her in the back corner, underneath the small window. The Las Vegas sun was pouring in and he suddenly realized they'd be on shift for a very long time. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her head was bent down, her hair hanging in waves across her face. 

"Sara."

"I'm fine." She lifted her head, defiance gleaming in her eyes. 

Grissom chuckled. "Sara" he said again, searching for the right words. "Do you want to uhh talk about it?"

At least she laughed. She laughed like it was the funniest thing she'd heard in a long time and she laughed until tears were streaming down her face and Grissom knew that she wasn't really laughing at all. He sat down next to her, awkwardly, and gently held her as she cried.

It wasn't more than a minute or two before he could feel Sara gathering her strength and pulling herself back together. He surveyed the damage to the locker room—nothing too serious, although Greg would be upset she broke his Magic 8 ball. A quick check of Greg's open locker assured Grissom that the Seamonkeys were okay, at least.

He turned back to see Sara roughly wiping her eyes on sleeves of her shirt. 

"Are there days when it's too much for you, Grissom?"

Grissom sighed heavily. "All the time. But I just keep reminding myself of one thing."

"Okay, I'll bite. What's the one thing?"

"Everyone around me is having a worse day than I am."

With that, she really started laughing. He enjoyed the sound of it for a little while before speaking.

"Shift's over. You should go home. Can I drive you?"

"Okay. But not home," she said, thinking of the stack of crime books and the cat she had waiting for her.

"Then where?"

"Breakfast?""

They'd gone to a little diner a few miles down the strip. It was called Mom's, which bothered Grissom.

"Never eat at a restaurant called Mom's', never play cards with a man named Doc and never lie down with a woman with more troubles than you." He'd said.

"Don't worry Grissom, I don't want to sleep with you," she'd joked over their vegetarian omelets. He'd ordered it on his own, which surprised her, because she didn't expect that he'd remember her preferences, let alone bend to respect them.

"You want to talk about those troubles?"

"Maybe later."

"You want to be alone for a while?"

"No. Not really."

"Okay." 

They'd gotten into Grissom's Tahoe and Sara was curled up, asleep before they'd gone a mile. He marveled at how still she could be.


	4. One tear does not a wreck make.

Disclaimer: Same as before.

Warning: If you don't like long S/G interactions with plenty of UST and a PSV or two, don't read further. You might want to skip this chapter all together. It won't hurt the plot too much. This one's for the GSR'ers. 

Sara didn't remember how they'd gotten to Grissom's townhouse. She'd been there to drop off reports, evidence, but never had she been invited in. She found herself drawn to a collection of butterflies, immobile under glass.

"They were all dead when I found them," Grissom said quietly from the couch. He had a glass of water in one hand and a remote control in the other. Suddenly Sara could hear the sound of rain in the background.

"You found all of these?"

"I've been collecting them since I was a child."

"Reminds me of a book called "The Collector"," Sara said, reaching out to trace the edge of a butterfly's multicolored wing through the glass. 

"Yes," he replied, glad to be in work-related territory again. "A man tires of collecting butterflies, so he starts collecting beautiful women. He was a lover of beauty, above all. He was fascinated by it and he wondered if beauty was connected to life force. He wondered if they would still be beautiful if he took their lives. So he killed them. But mine were all dead when I found them."

"Your butterflies or your women?"

"Both, as of late." Grissom watched, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth, as Sara walked off the room, pacing the length and width of it, studying his paintings, his music collection, his butterflies. "Sara?"

"Yeah?"

"What are the dimensions of this room?"

"10 by 14. 140 square feet. Why?"

"Stop working for a second and let me in." The words surprised him even as they came out of his mouth. They had surprised her as well, and Sara sat down in a chair opposite him.

"Look," she began. "That thing back there it won't happen again."

"Sara, I'm still not entirely sure what that thing' was."

There was a long pause before Sara replied. "Do you want me to tell you?"

"I have an idea already."

"Dangerous territory, Grissom."

"If you want to stop, we'll stop."

"Stop what?" she asked, although they both knew what he meant.

"I think you've met Marc Danvers before."

"His name was Marc Evans at the time. But, yes."

"You were involved. Intimately?" He asked, uncertainty evident in his voice.

"Yes."

"You were 23."

"22. How did you know?"

"When we met at that first seminar, you were 25. You'd just had a birthday. A man brushed past you and your entire posture changed. Defensive posturing. His hand accidentally touched your sleeve and you had to fight for control of yourself. You looked like you wanted to run from the room."

"You remember all that?"

"I watched you. You fascinated me," he said simply, before quickly plunging ahead. "You were intimate, things ended badly, you left him–"

"He left me."

"Curious."

"What?"

"Sara" Grissom paused, studying her from across the room. This new information was puzzling, incompatible with what he knew about Sara, her life, and her personality. "I feel that this conversation might not be entirely appropriate."

"Gris, I don't need you to be my boss right now. Just be my friend?"

He sighed. "I'm not very good at this."

"You're better than you think. So. He left me."

"You were living together?"  
"Yes."

"I still don't understand."

"What?"

"Why anyone would leave you."

It was that deer-in-the-headlights look. The same look she'd given him after he'd told her how she taught him to appreciate beauty. Like she doubted her ears. Or doubted his sanity.

"I wanted him to go," she said quietly, and the story that began the day she bought the book and ended the day he left her with it came pouring out.

"I don't understand," he mused again, after she'd finished. "Why didn't you just go?" His voice was quiet and she marveled at the tender, nonjudgmental tone he'd used. "He hurt you." A nod. "Physically?" 

"Never seriously."

"You know better than that." 

"I was a different person back then." She explained.

"Of course you were. It was ten years ago. People are dynamic, fluid. Without change, if life is static, if we don't keep learning" He shook his head, running a hand through his gray curls. "I don't know. We die, I guess."

"We die anyway."  
"Sarcasm becomes you." 

"I what?"  
There was a long silence as Grissom wondered exactly where the boundary lines were drawn between them. With Nick, Warrick, even Catherine, he knew what function he had to serve. He was a mentor to Warrick, almost a father to Nick. Sometimes he was a protector to Catherine, but just as often she went to bat for him. She was more his equal than anyone else in the department was was and he'd learned to respect and value that. But Sara 

One day he found himself scolding her, pushing her to find a life outside of work, at the same time knowing he had none of his own. He'd treated her like a child who needed his schooling. Yet on another day, he stepped over the line between them, blurred the boundary, and he didn't even blink. It was a natural thing, to be honest with her, to speak without guarding his thoughts. 

"I'm confused, Sara." 

"Confused."

"I don't want to intrude. You have the right to keep some things private. But I have questions."

"Why did I stay?"

"You're a fighter, Sara."

"People fight because they have to, Grissom. It's learned." She rearranged her limbs, pulling herself further into Grissom's chair. "Have you ever felt indebted to someone? You felt like you owed them your life, your very existence?"

*Every day, * Grissom thought. "I understand what you mean, yes."

"I'd gone to a bar. Someone put something in my drink, I don't know." Sara noted the growing concern on Grissom's face but plunged ahead. "The next thing I know, I lying on the pavement, I can't make my eyes focus and this guy's got his hands all over me." She shivered, forcing herself back to the present. "And then I woke up in Mark's apartment. Spare bedroom."

"He was a Good Samaritan." 

"Yeah. At first." She considered saying more but decided against it.

"Sara. You know I should take you off the case."

"Why, I." Sara sighed, realizing she had no more energy left to fight with him. "Yeah. I know. I guess working on another case might be better."

Grissom dropped his glasses on the table, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. "Sara I am slowly developing a theory about the Baby Danvers case."

"People are creatures of habit, Grissom." She looked at him. "What you said about change it's true. We do need to grow and learn. But on the inside, we're animals."

"You're saying a leopard doesn't change his spots."

"I'm saying that Maggie Danvers isn't just a suspect. She's a potential victim."

"I didn't see any evidence of that," Grissom said, even as he thought of how Maggie cowered in the interrogation room. "No bruising, no lacerations, no evidence of facial fractures, fresh or otherwise."

"The bruises won't show. They'll be on her stomach, her thighs." Sara traced an old scar on her leg through her jeans. "She'll have been a survivor of sexual abuse, rape, incest."

Grissom nodded, finally understanding Sara's relationship with this man. "He came upon her at a time when she was most vulnerable. He exploited that, abused her trust."

Sara wasn't sure if Grissom meant Maggie Danvers or her. "A man came upon her, saw her, and just for fun destroyed her,'" she quoted.

"Brecht? Or Chekov?"

"Chekov. The Seagull. Act 4. The scene where Nina's come back to Constantine, desperate for him to notice her, almost begging him for his affection."

"Yet he's so involved in his own life he can't even see that all she wants is his approval."

"Love. She wants his love."

"Sara you don't seem like a Chekov fan."

Sara blushed, the flush creeping from her cheeks up to her hairline. "I was Nina, junior year of college."

"You never mentioned it."

"It didn't come up."

"What else hasn't come up?"

"So many things." She wiped her sleeve across her face and Grissom realized she was crying. Puzzling. "I can't believe I've let you see me like this," she murmured.

"I see you as I've always seen you."

"I'm a wreck."

*One tear does not a wreck make, * Grissom thought. "'I'm not concerned that you have fallen. I am concerned that you arise.'"

"Maya Angelou?"

"Abraham Lincoln."

"A wise man."

There was a long silence that Grissom was reluctant to break. "Thank you for telling me."

"No, Grissom. Thank you for caring."

"Can you continue on the Baby Dole case?" 

"I yes."

"Get some sleep. We'll work on it when you're more rested." He shrugged. "A fresh perspective."

"Sleep--here?" 

Grissom could almost see the headlights reflected in her eyes. "Oh. Of course not. You can use my room."

"You want me to stay here. In your apartment."

"Condo."

"Fine. Where's your bathroom?"

"Off the bedroom. Towels in the linen closet in the hall."

Grissom watched as Sara disappeared down the hallway. He hoped she wouldn't notice the slight pinkish cast to his towels. Laundry accident. He'd meant to replace them, but somehow it wasn't high on his list of priorities.

-----

"I hear Sidle had a major breakdown last shift. You night shift science nerds certainly seem to have high rates of mental illness."

"Look, Eckley, I don't know what you're talking about," Warrick cast a glance in Eckley's direction, hoping to make the man's head explode simply by staring at it. "Any grave yard shift meltdowns are probably from the stress of picking up your shift's slack."

"You know, she's going to have to pay for the damage she did to the locker room."

*Be glad you weren't around, or it could have been your face. * Warrick pushed the thought away. "I have work to do," he said, heading for ballistics.

"Well, Sidle should start to feel better real soon with Grissom attending to her needs personally," Eckley spit, accentuating the words "needs" and "personally." He was satisfied to see Warrick stop in his tracks, although the man didn't turn around. "I have it on good authority that they left together."

"Oh, really." Warrick shook his head and continued down the hallway. He was constantly amazed by how low Eckley would stoop.

"Her car is still in the lot. You know, any inappropriate contact between Grissom and Sidle could be grounds for dismissal for them both," he called.

"Eckley, isn't there some high-ranking ass that needs kissing?"

Eckley's face contorted and Warrick could tell, even from a distance, that he was enraged. "Don't say I didn't warn you," he groused before disappearing down a corridor. 


End file.
